Hassan Sherwani ROLE OF SALES AND MARKETING IN ... - Oulu

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individual customer or customer organization that guide behavior, products and services.
Values, whether personal or organizational, are very closely related to the goals
customers may have. In other words, value is created by delivering benefits that help
customers achieve their goals (Daniel et al., 1997). Ulaga and Eggert (2005) have
identified four characteristics of customer value
1. Customer value is a subjective concept
2. It is conceptualized as a trade-off between benefits and sacrifices
3. Benefits and sacrifices can be multifaceted, and
4. Value perceptions are relative to competition.
There are different aspects and understandings for interpreting value as a view however;
two general meanings of value, ‘‘value-in-exchange’’ and ‘‘value-in-use’’, dominate
business literature. This division actually came about through Aristotle’s efforts to
address the differences between things (e.g., automobile) and their attributes, which
included the qualities (e.g., red, fast, sporty), quantities (e.g., one car), and relations
(e.g., lease, ownership) of such things. Use-value was recognized as a collection of
substances or things and the qualities associated with these collections. Alternatively,
exchange-value was considered as the quantity of a substance that could be
commensurable value of all things (Vargo et al., 2008).
According to Ulaga and Eggert (2005), customer value concepts can be summarized as
the trade-off between the benefits and the sacrifices in a market exchange Moreover,
Ravald and Grönroos(1996) clarify the concept of value as a multifaceted and
complicated process and therefore; there is an evident risk that the concept is used
without any efforts and commitments to understand really what it means to provide
value to customers, how added value should be related to customer needs and the
achievement of profitability for the parties involved. It is seen that many organizations
think too much of the value they get from customer instead of pondering over value
being provided to the customer and this ends up into a wrong strategic view point.
In marketing literature, Naumann (1995) explains the concept of customer value as
having a dual nature - a) value the company provides to the customer, through its
product and service offerings, brands and relationships and b) the value the customer